A bombing, a self-immolation and a double-standard

posted Aug 2, 2013, 1:00 PM by The Tibetan Political Review

By John N. (ICT), July 24, 2013

Last Saturday two citizens of the People’s Republic of China walked
into public areas with the intent to commit self-harm. One of them, a
Chinese petitioner named Ji Zhongxing, set off a bomb [1]
in a terminal of Beijing Capital International Airport. The other, a
Tibetan monk named Konchok Sonam, doused his robes with gasoline and set
himself alight outside of Soktsang monastery in eastern Tibet. Ji
survived the blast but lost his left hand; Konchok passed away at the
site of his self-immolation. No one else was hurt in either incident.
Both seem to have been motivated by a sense of injustice: Ji had spent a
decade trying to get compensation after allegedly being paralyzed by a
police beating, while Konchok told his friends [2] that “living under Chinese rule in Tibet has brought too much suffering.”

Despite some parallels between these two cases, they have been
treated completely differently by Chinese official media. This
particular disparity in how Tibetans and Chinese are treated in the PRC
has become more and more apparent over the last few years as the Tibetan
self-immolations have continued. At its heart, this seems to be a clear
example of biases in how the Chinese government treats Tibetans.

First, the media reaction to the two events was drastically
different. Beyond a general disapproval of his tactics, Ji’s case has
aroused some measure of understanding among Chinese journalists. A China
Youth Daily article (as translated by BBC) [3]
said: “Ji Zhongxing’s detonation of an explosive device at
CapitalAirport was an extremely unwise way to uphold his rights. It is
not permitted by law, and he will be severely punished by law. But this
bombing has raised many warnings to society. Was Ji Zhongxing disabled
by a traffic accident or by a beating? The public awaits the truth.” A Beijing News [4]
article said that authorities “cannot ignore the man’s aspirations” in
seeking redress for the beating, before hoping that the relevant
departments would reexamine his case responsibly. Global Times [5]
released an editorial supporting the “relentless pursuit of fairness
and justice,” and called for increased reforms so that “vulnerable
groups” could have unobstructed channels for expressing their demands.
All of these stories described his circumstances and the nature of his
grievances.

Chinese media reacted to the self-immolation of Konchok Sonam, on the other hand, with absolute silence. A Panguso search for Chinese news items related to self-immolations or Dzoege [6]
(the county in which he died) returned not one story about Konchok.
Looking on a broader level, the media and political campaigns unleashed
by Chinese authorities against the Tibetan self-immolators have no
analogue in the Ji case. A May 2013 documentary [7]
about the self-immolations by CCTV, subtitled “Evidence of the Hands
behind the Tragedies,” promised to present evidence that Tibetans in
exile had somehow manufactured the self-immolations as a terroristic
plot. The evidence was never presented, which is unsurprising given that
the Chinese government has never substantiated these claims. [8]
The only sympathy offered to Tibetan self-immolators by the Chinese
media is in the context of their supposedly having been ‘instigated’
into committing the act, which has the effect of shifting the blame from
the authorities whose policies the self-immolators protested to the
Dalai Lama and various Tibetan advocacy groups. Meanwhile, no such
hidden agenda has been alleged thus far in the Ji case, part of an
apparent tacit admission that his complaints had some validity.

Chinese media outlets have also engaged in a disingenuous campaign of
character assassination against Tibetan self-immolators, alleging that
some decided to do it because of personal problems such as alcoholism,
inappropriate sexual relations, and poor grades. The actual concerns of
the self-immolators, as expressed in the various notes, recordings, and
statements given to friends and family, have been completely ignored.
While Chinese journalists and citizens [9]
begin to discuss the factors that caused Ji to set off a bomb in an
airport, an open and realistic discussion of the factors that have
caused 120 Tibetans so far to commit self-immolation is still forbidden
inside China.

Chinese media outlets have even been more understanding of Chinese
bombers who managed to kill others than they have of Tibetan
self-immolators. In 2011 a Chinese man named Qian Mingqi [10] successfully detonated multiple bombs at government offices in Jiangxi, killing at least three people. Global Times ran an article [12]
the next day quoting a professor from RenminUniversity who said that
although the use of violence should never be encouraged, “authorities
should learn to open smoother channels for the public to file their
complaints before problems turn into confrontations and then violence.”
This logical and obvious conclusion has never been applied to the
Tibetan self-immolations by mainstream PRC government organs or media
outlets. Instead, authorities instituted even higher levels of security
in Tibetan regions and launched a wave of arrests and new restrictions.

In these cases the ethnicity of the perpetrator, rather than the
dangerousness of their deeds, is a much better indicator of how the
government will react. Writing about the Beijing Airport bombing,
Caixin’s Luo Jieqi explained [13]
that in China “there’s a hand over our throat. Reporters have to race
against official restrictions. Sometimes before our voices can be heard,
the news has been drowned out. That’s just the way things are. The
state’s information mechanisms are closed off. The dark side of a story
is often hidden away.” Once Ji detonated the bomb, however, some limited
public discussion began to take place. The same can’t be said for
Tibetans, whose grievances have been shunted aside and ignored as if
they come from a politically untouchable caste in the PRC. On Saturday a
Chinese man became a tragic figure whose regrettable act was spurred by
real problems that require solutions, while a Tibetan monk joined a
group of people dismissed by Beijing as rejects who were duped into
self-immolation. Unfortunately, the only solution Beijing has come to
based on this narrative calls for a greater struggle, more repression,
and a tighter hand over the throat of Tibetans and those who would speak
the truth on their behalf.

Published with permission and originally published at http://weblog.savetibet.org/2013/07/24/a-bombing-a-self-immolation-and-a-double-standard/.